


the only kind of good (was thinking that we could)

by spock



Category: Apostle (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, Post-Canon, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-28 18:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21141545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/pseuds/spock
Summary: If a man loves the world, the love of the of the Father is not in him.





	the only kind of good (was thinking that we could)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psychomachia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomachia/gifts).

i.

The fires burn long into the night. Heat reaches Malcolm even off on the far edge of the island, the only one to benefit from its warmth. Ash stokes heat into the air too, and it's a cleansing burn to his lungs.

He keeps his eyes trained forward, taking in the sea. Dawn casts a shadow over his back just as the temple gives at last, a loud snap that raises above the crashing of the waves below, a great mass tumbling to the earth.

All that's left of Erisden smoldering heap of wrong turns and misplaced loyalties.

_Good_, Malcolm thinks.

ii.

There had been a time when he’d resolved to place faith in none but his fellow man.

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

The goddess and her gifts - it'd been that which he'd seen in her. The ruins of the Acropolis stood steadfast as a beacon. A relic of the Old World preserved to serve the new.

Perhaps Quinn had been right in the end. Malcolm had been brandished with many labels, but soft always seemed to be intended as the most cutting.

He cared. His whole life. Always, always.

iii.

Malcolm keeps vigil. He neither hungers nor thirsts. The grass is soft beneath his palms as he listens with the whole of his body.

Thomas comes back to himself eventually, blinking. Malcolm sees the shift of Thomas' body from the corner of his eye and looks away from the sea at last.

"I cannot hear your voice," Malcolm says. His own is steady despite its disuse. The words have lived in his throat for days. "Is it because you haven't anything to say in general, or to me specifically?"

Thomas gazes up at him with irises so much darker than they'd been the first time Malcolm had met him. It's a passing look that breaks away just as quickly as their eyes manage to catch, Thomas staring off into nothing yet again.

Like a spell broken, Malcolm feels the aches of his body start to creep in on his conscious mind from wherever they’d been banished to. It's a labour to stand without his cane after such a long time stationed immobile, but he manages it.

The earth still has Thomas in its hold, and Malcolm fears journeying too far from him in such a state. He looks toward the town and is surprised to have his view so obstructed by an outcropping of trees.

Erisden is lush again, more alive than it'd been even when Malcolm had first set eyes to it. Likely more than it'd been since the Romans and Vikings, even, had last stained its sands with their sins.

iv.

Frank had claimed to have been glad to follow Malcolm. _When it was all about the word of your heart._

That had been his mistake, as much as any of it. Interpreting what the goddess had said and done through the language of his own heart. 

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

Malcolm was soft for the world, for people, always. He'd longed to share what he'd discovered. To reveal paradise to his fellow man.

Perhaps Frank has been right in the end. Their experiment had turned sour.

v.

This island of theirs has been reborn. He wanders through the forest, feeling as if he's been transported to an entirely different place.

The goddess had been so old when she'd first saved them. Her gifts plenty, but hardly bountiful.

Thomas is no old god.

vi.

Malcolm tries to return to the town, to see what still stands of it. What can be used to build anew, if anything?

Erisden had risen before from nothing, and again it will be at his hands that see it revived. 

Yet each new route he takes through the wood leads him back, without fail, to the edge where Thomas lays.

Thomas, who still refuses to consort with him in word spoken aloud or no.

Malcolm becomes weary as the day's light begins to fade. His body aches to drink, but he sees no spring and the sky holds no clouds. His stomach hungers, but there is nary an animal to be found, and the vegetation that finds isn’t any he trusts well enough to consume.

He returns to his spot beside Thomas's prone form, the agony that is his leg extended out in front of him.

Eventually, Malcolm lays down. His eyes fall closed between one blink and the next.

vii.

Thomas is sat upright when Malcolm wakes.

Vines no longer embed themselves into his skin, though the grass beneath them seems attuned to him, straining at an angle in his direction. The trees too, as well as the flowers. A single cloud stains the sky, and it's positioned as such to shade them from otherwise the harsh sun overhead.

Malcolm has not slept so late into the morning in all his days.

Strange eyes consider him as he struggles to rise, weak arms leveraging so that he can get his legs under him.

Thomas speaks to him then, though his lips do not move.

"You honor me." They're more a croak than actual words, and Malcolm does not care to respond any the more directly to what has been said than to otherwise acknowledge his happiness to have been spoken to at all.

Thomas's expression turns to pity, and he takes Malcolm's arm, standing tall and bringing Malcolm with him. All the aches of Malcolm's body leave him, the hunger and the thirst, the everpresent throb of his leg.

Once Malcolm is able to stand on his own, Thomas releases his hold on him. The pain returns to him, but so much diminished that it needn't been compared at all.

viii.

Thomas ventures into his forest. Malcolm follows after him.

ix.

Eventually they come to a clearing.

In the center of it is a great mass of vines and trees. House shaped, maybe, if you caught a glance of it from the corner of your eye.

The sort of thing that might be made by someone that had a house explained to them, without also being told about the modern machinery needed to achieve it.

A person left to come up with such things on their own.

x.

Thomas stares at him, expectant. It takes Malcolm an unflattering amount of time to realize that this is the same space his town had once stood.

He takes a deep breath and tries to work out how he feels.

The air shifts around him. He can feel the heat of Thomas' body as he stands at Malcolm's back.

"Love not the world," Thomas says, aloud, and isn't that novel. The sound of his voice incites something inside of Malcolm, always has, since before the man became a god.

A hand settles on his shoulder. Malcolm is keenly aware of the soil beneath his shoes. The wind kissing at his cheek.

"Neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

It has been a long time since Malcolm last humored quotations from this particular book, and he is surprised to find that he can remember the verse.

"For all that is in the world," he recites, and though it is his voice speaking, he hears Thomas's in his mind, and perhaps that's reason enough for why the rest flows out of him so easily. "The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."

Malcolm licks his lips and turns enough to look at Thomas, mindful not to jostle the hand still cradling him. “Is that what you intend to do then?” Malcolm asks. “Spurn the world?”

Thomas looks at him like he’s seen the full weight of Malcolm’s life, and is ready to pass judgment on it before the rest has even come to pass. “I learned long ago about the fruitlessness of spreading faith for faith’s sake.” He looks about the clearing, though to Malcolm it doesn't seem that his eyes take any of it in, his gaze so far away. “Haven’t you?”

Malcolm’s throat clicks as he swallows.

“I’ve little need for a prophet.” The words echo into his head.

“So you are to be the father then?” It seems so strange to think.

Thomas’s face softens, cruelty hovering on the edge of his expression, in the wild cut of his mouth that existed long before he was changed. “I sustain you,” he says. “I house you.” Thomas shrugs. “I could use someone to worship me, and who I serve in return.”

Malcolm has done stranger things.

A lifetime ago he’d torn into is own hand, spilling blood to honor Thomas’s selflessness. This time he turns his face and exchanges a kiss instead, resigning himself to be selfish at last.

  
  
  



End file.
